Developer sites - your opinion

For me, all that is needed is the downloads with a number of good quality screenshots, and if anything is under construction a news page.

Most important thing is a frequently updated news page, even if there hasn't been much progress it shows that the dev is serious and it's not more vapourware.

There's nothing I dislike more than a) a website with dozens of pages and only one or two downloads and b) a website with no screen shots, as you have no idea if what you are looking at is something you may enjoy or something that doesn't appeal to you.

This could be interesting. Please, everybody looking at this, do comment on as many sites as you can. Not just Dexter's or mine, come to that. It will help site owners make improvements where they're wanted.

What I would really like is a developer's blog, much like the one on railsimroutes. This could give further insight on the process of developing the route, and can even teach aspiring developers.

Probably the majority of visitors to the developers sites are users rather than other developers. Unless in the case of Anthony Bowden who is much more than a mere add-on developer, and Eezypeasy, who does have stuff for creating items.

It's still a good idea though. Give me a hint about an aspect which you are curious about and I will open a page on the celtictrainsim blog and try and cover it. then see if it takes off.

graymac wrote:Probably the majority of visitors to the developers sites are users rather than other developers. Unless in the case of Anthony Bowden who is much more than a mere add-on developer, and Eezypeasy, who does have stuff for creating items.

Haha, I also have stuff for creating items. But a blog seems a nice idea. I'll think about it.

Does anyone want to try this?
https://celtictrains.wordpress.com/

Let's see if it's an eagle or a turkey!
If it takes off then it will be maintained, so long as it doesn't make too much demand on my time

And by 16:40 hrs we've has a question already, si I know it works.

(though I'm finding Wordpress a bloody awful piece of kit to use, too geeky and not intuitive at all)

Nice! Maybe you could talk about the challenges faced when developing the route and how you overcame them, for example, with animated objects (passing trains, station clocks, passing aeroplanes, etc.). You could try also talk about upcoming features in newer versions and provide sneak peeks.

Just some ideas to get the ball rolling.

If I got started on ALL those topics I could write a book. If you want to visit this :
http://celtictrains.wordpress.com/
(it's a sort of add-on for users to ask questions)

Post a question on the "ask graymac" thread and I will try and give an answer.
Upcoming stuff will be shown on the main site, when the info is ready. I may use YouTube videos for some "sneak peeks" if they prove popular.

I was using Wordpress in the past and blogged about how I developed stuff and how I tested plugins, et cetera, but then I couldn't afford to keep it up so I moved to free hosting, which cannot have Wordpress.

Later I kept thinking about trying wordpress.com as it's better for posting news and having a blog but there isn't enough room for my addons there and I don't want to have two sites.

I could surely use Dropbox public folders for storing addons and the rest can be done within Wordpress, but then I don't have statistics of downloads, so that's not so good either.

So I either pay for hosting (with Wordpress and my own PHP scripts for statistics) or I stay where I am.

Well, I've done something like what Graymac has done. I've opened a blog on Wordpress.com and imported the contents of my old website. As far as downloads, links pages, etc goes I'll keep those on my main website. I've been planning to do something about being able to easily post news and images, so I now I have it.

My blog:
http://phontanka.wordpress.com

My downloads, links, galleries:
http://phontanka.atw.hu

phontanka wrote:I could surely use Dropbox public folders for storing addons and the rest can be done within Wordpress, but then I don't have statistics of downloads, so that's not so good either.

I use Dropbox hosted files, linked via bit.ly so I can get stats too.

Oh, so bit.ly gives you stats. It's good to know that, thanks!

So does stat counter, it gives you everything, what was clicked, from what IP and how many new and returning visits per day and per page, my site has it

phontanka wrote:Oh, so bit.ly gives you stats. It's good to know that, thanks!

In any bit.ly link, just add a + at the end, so http://bit.ly/Ys4AWR+ gives you stats for the link http://bit.ly/Ys4AWR.

I recommend signing up for a bit.ly account too.